The Ten Best Films of 2014

An actor
taking one last shot at redemption. A young woman realizing that we all have to
look back to move forward. The arc of boy to man. The best films of 2014
took viewers on unpredictable journeys that somehow still felt universal and
emotionally resonant. The diversity of this unique year in film is reflected by a top ten that spans the globe from San Francisco to Poland to New York to Detroit to an imaginary place called Zubrowka, but that always draws the viewer back toward universal concerns. You didn’t have to have grown up in Austin to see some of
your childhood in Richard Linklater’s cinematic experiment "Boyhood." You didn’t
have to be alive during the marches in Selma to feel the electricity in the air as protestors march in Ava DuVernay’s "Selma." You didn’t have to be stoned to feel the
buzz of P.T. Anderson’s addictive comedy "Inherent Vice."

About the rankings: We asked our
ten regular film critics to submit top ten lists from this great year, and then
consolidated them with a traditional points system—10 points for #1, 9 points
for #2, etc.—resulting in the list below, with a new entry for each awarded film.
We’ll publish all of our individual lists, along with many more by our regular
contributors, tomorrow.

Note: There
is one film not on the list below that we all hold so close to our hearts that
it proved understandably difficult to compare to the rest of the films screened
this year. To say that we have a personal connection to Steve James’
documentary “Life Itself” would be a drastic understatement. Without Roger
Ebert, none of us are here. For many of us, he was a friend and colleague. For
others, he was an inspiration. And, yet while it could be argued that we may be
biased, we also would be the first people to cry foul if “Life Itself” somehow
didn’t do justice to its source material or subject.

However, judging from the awards
it’s been piling up this season, that clearly wasn't the case. Based around remarkably frank footage of Roger and Chaz Ebert near the end of Roger's life, and sewn together with generous excerpts from Roger's same-titled autobiography, “Life Itself” has
reached far beyond those who were lucky enough to know Roger privately or
professionally. Recognizing that Ebert was always a newspaperman, James approaches his subject from every angle—the professional, the personal, the biographical, and so on. And each of these pieces is one brushstroke in this remarkable portrait of a life. At screenings around the world, from Sundance to Ebertfest to
Cannes, “Life Itself” has carried a rare emotional resonance. So consider it an unspoken, perhaps asterisked eleventh title on the list below.

“Two Days, One Night”
asks a loaded question: Would you give up a much-needed and well-deserved
year-end bonus to save the job of a co-worker? It’s an idea rich with
philosophical and psychological underpinnings; an experiment that would easily
lend itself to the sadistic provocations of a Michael Haneke or Lars von Trier.
Under the auspices of the Dardennes, this dilemma becomes the basis of a
suspense thriller as delicate as the rebuilt psyche of its heroine, Sandra
(Marion Cotillard). Having proven herself redundant by taking a leave of
absence after a nervous breakdown, Sandra must convince her colleagues to vote
against their own best interests to save her livelihood. The outcome is never
really in doubt, though there’s an extra detail that comes unexpectedly.
Instead, “Two Days, One Night” invites the viewer to walk a mile in the shoes
of characters on both sides of the equation. As Sandra patiently and, in
sometimes heartbreaking fashion, states her case to the voters, we feel
ourselves leaning towards, or away from, our original positions. Both sides
have an understandable, credible case, forcing a showdown between our selfish
and charitable natures. Along the way, the Dardennes drop pebbles of ideas
which form enormous ripples of contemplation: Is the company’s idea of a vote a
statement of democracy or one of cowardice? Does Sandra deserve a second
chance? Have the good intentions she fostered in the past toward a particular
colleague paved her road to hell? At the center of “Two Days, One Night” is a
spectacular, understated performance by Marion Cotillard. Bucking the tradition
of using non-actors, the Dardennes hire a seasoned vet and she returns the
favor by stepping brilliantly into the obscurity of her character. Whether you
are for or against her plight, her performance refuses to afford you an easy
escape from your decision. At times thought-provoking, harrowing, funny and
mournful, “Two Days, One Night” deserves a spot on this and every other ten
best list of 2014. (Odie Henderson)

9. “Selma” (Ava
DuVernay)

"Selma" is a small miracle: a film about a key moment in the American Civil Rights movement that has all the trappings of a self-congratulatory, Oscar-bait historical picture, but none of the bombast and far greater intelligence. As written by Paul Webb, directed by Ava DuVernay and performed by a huge and consistently engaging cast, it has a knack for laying out precisely what is at stake, personally and politically, for every character and group during every moment in the story, and doing it in a way that seems organic.

Spurred by the Birmingham Church bombing, which killed four little girls, Dr. Martin Luther King (David Oyelowo) comes to Selma, Alabama, looking to give the local civil rights protesters a boost, oppose Alabama governor George Wallace (Tim Roth), and light a moral fire under president Lyndon B. Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) that will make him grant federal protection to the marchers and inoculate them against harassment by police and local rednecks. But this isn’t a two-dimensional, "saints vs. sinners" melodrama in which the point is to encourage viewers to pat themselves on the back for holding correct opinions. It’s about how history happens: the on-the-ground decisions that capitalize on (and exploit) people’s personalities in order to cause a certain action to occur, thus inching the tacticians closer to their goal.

It’s also about the human frailties that affect policy. Much is made here of the distrust and resentment between local organizers and the King camp, even though they know they’re on the same side, and of the infighting between Wallace and local authorities, and different police and governmental factions within Selma. The film is also very astute about showing how local political protesters and their government opponents use media to get their message out, amplify public outrage, and spur changes in law and policy.

All these factors come together, dazzlingly, in the film’s centerpiece, a succession of scenes in which marchers try to leave Selma via the Edmund Pettus Bridge and walk 54 miles to the state capital, Montgomery to demand reform in voting laws. Although they are bedeviled and obstructed along the way by local officials and police, the world is watching thanks to live TV which broadcasts images of police brutality instantly, and newspaper reporters who write the first draft of history (one that’s sympathetic to the protesters) and publish it the next day. Time, space and rhetoric are all collapsed in these moments, and we get a sense—rare not just in Hollywood films but in all films—of how present-day chaos gives way to lasting change. (Matt Zoller Seitz)

James Gray (“Two Lovers”) confirms his place as one of the
great cinematic poets of New York City with this masterpiece, a dark and
brooding drama that almost seems like two films at once: a tale of sin and
suffering set in a crime-filled New York awash with impoverished immigrants
from Europe, it is also a hauntingly oblique evocation of a century’s worth of
artistic representations of that place and time. Though set in 1921, the film
evinces none of the flashy modernizing momentum of the Roaring Twenties.
Rather, it seems like it might be taking place a decade or two earlier, in a
crepuscular underworld of little light or comfort. At Ellis Island, Polish
Catholic immigrant Ewa (Marion Cotillard), distraught at her sister being
quarantined for tuberculosis, accepts help from the suspiciously solicitous
Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix), who sweeps her into a realm of tawdry dives and music
halls where he prostitutes her while also falling in love with her. Already
fraught with guilt and aggression, their relationship is further complicated by
the appearance of Bruno’s cousin Emil (Jeremy Renner), a stage illusionist who
develops his own feelings for the woman. While meticulously depicting the real
hardships of immigrant life nearly a century ago, all of it sculpted into a
drama of great power and feeling, the film has the inexorable flow of a dream
or myth, while simultaneously reminding us of the ways such situations have
been treated in novels, theater, opera, and even dance in the last century. But
most of all, Gray’s story (which he has said reflects his grandparents’
experience, as well as being autobiographical) and the enveloping chiaroscuro
of Darius Khondji’s brilliant 35mm images call up cinematic antecedents, most
especially D.W. Griffith and other New York filmmakers of the silent era. Indeed,
saintly Griffith heroines embodied by Lillian Gish and other actresses seem to
underlie both the Madonna-like character of Ewa and the luminous performance of
Cotillard, who learned Polish for the role. Her exquisite work is matched by
the forceful turns of Phoenix (a Gray regular) and Renner, whose bitter rivalry
provokes the tale’s tragic conclusion. (Godfrey Cheshire)

At first
glance, this formally dazzling and often hallucinatory black comedy about a
once-popular movie star (Michael Keaton) making a last-ditch attempt to restart
his career by writing, directing and starring in a seemingly doomed Broadway
play looked like it might be the kind of film that dazzles viewers the first
time around but which would reveal its hollow nature on subsequent viewings. As
subsequent viewings have proven, Inarritu has not just simply given us another
extended in-joke that will amuse media types and those who want to at least feel
as if they are in the know. Instead, he uses his hero's situation as a way to
explore far more universal feelings of despair, alienation and the loss of
control that will resonate just as strongly with people who have never once
picked up a copy of "Entertainment Weekly." It is a satire, to be
sure, but one that manages to be both caustic and humane and when all is said
and done, it says more about the human condition in more moving and thoughtful
ways than Inarritu was able to accomplish in more ostensibly serious-minded
works like "21 Grams" and "Babel." Yes, the parallels
between Keaton and Riggan are uncanny in both the most obvious aspects as well
as the tinier details but this is not simply a case of an actor essentially
playing himself—this is a performance as original and nuanced as he has ever
given and fully deserves all the accolades it has received. Alongside his turn,
equally fine work is delivered by co-stars Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Andrea
Riseborough, Zack Galifianakis, Amy Ryan and the awesome Emma Stone as
well. Watching them spark off of each other throughout is another one of the film's many delights. (Peter Sobczynski)

Jim
Jarmusch's vampire love story is a languid dark dreamspace, aching with
longing, sharply humorous, and pierced with almost unbearable sadness. It's a
swoon of love, so powerful and poignant that emerging from the film is like
disentangling yourself from a deep, dream-filled sleep. Lusciously filmed in
Tangier and Detroit, exhausted insomniac cities with memories of greatness in
their foundations, "Only Lovers Left Alive" is about many things, but
one of its deepest pleasures is its romantic celebration of the past, the
artists who pierced the veil of time to say something that still has reverb:
Christopher Marlowe, Buster Keaton, Eddie Cochran, Albert Einstein, Jack White,
the references proliferate. Adam (Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda Swinton)
surround themselves with the artists who have sustained them, finding great
comfort in their collective presence. Jarmusch is interested in how we
intersect with time, and how we connect. How do we reach one another?

Popping
on a 45 of Wanda Jackson's "Funnel of Love" may seem like a quirky detail,
but in Jarmusch's world view, such actions are essential, they keep us connected with the great flow of time.
Hiddleston and Swinton create an exhausted and tender space, sensual and full
of trust. They approach one another, still, with great kindness, even though
they have been together for centuries. Watching the two of them lingeringly
suck on human-blood popsicles in a dingy Detroit kitchen is one of the sexiest
moments in cinema this year. Einstein's “spooky entanglement” theory is crucial
to the film, the strange theory that particles separated from one another, no
matter how vast the distance, are still somehow entangled. John Cassevetes once
said, “I don’t care about the scene. I only care about what happens between people.” That's the space that Jarmusch cares
about in "Only Lovers Left Alive": the space between people and how
charged it can be. How sad, how intimate. (Sheila O’Malley)

“Ida” is a road trip drama that takes viewers to new emotional
destinations. Poland’s foreign-language Oscar entry is a haunting,
black-and-white period piece set in 1962 that summons painful memories of one
of the most terrible periods in history—the Holocaust—in a hushed, unhurried
way that is harrowing in its intimacy. And it offers a rare female point of
view. Our companions are two women who couldn’t be more different, save for the
fact that they are both survivors. We meet a youthful novitiate, Anna, at a
Polish convent—nearly medieval in its austerity—who is on the verge of taking
her vows. Her Mother Superior suggests that the sheltered girl should visit her
only surviving relative, her aunt on her mother’s side, before undergoing the
rite. Turns out, Wanda is a single, somewhat attractive middle-aged city
dweller with a taste for cigarettes, hard liquor and one-night stands.

And what
she reveals to her niece would leave her speechless if she weren’t already given
to long meditative silences: Anna was born a Jew and her real name is Ida
Lebenstein. She was taken from her parents during the war and ended up at the
nunnery. She also informs Ida of her work as a state prosecutor for the harsh
post-war Communist regime who earned the nickname Red Wanda as she sent
wrongdoers to their death. Such pure-of-heart piety and hard-bitten
worldliness proves to be a powerful combination as the two join forces to find
out the awful truth of what happened to her parents by traveling by car to the
family home. Director Pawel Pawlikowski has had success previously, including
the well-received 2004 coming-of-age drama “My Summer of Love,” but he seems to
have elevated his game by doing his first film set in his homeland. The stark
moody beauty of his film goes a long way to distinguish “Ida” from other more
mundane fare. But he rightfully puts most of his faith in his incredible
actresses. It is hard to watch “Ida” and not constantly seek out newcomer Agata
Trzebuchowska’s angelic face. Her expressions of joy, sorrow, anger and
even amusement convey so much more than mere words. Meanwhile, Agata Kulesza is
a revelation as Wanda, complicated and abrasive yet as surprising in her
reactions to their discoveries as is her niece. Pawlikowski manages to sneak in
the seductive sounds of Coltrane onto the soundtrack thanks to a handsome young
man with a saxophone who hitches a ride with the two women. Just like him, we
are privileged to be part of this profound journey with these two memorable
women and are forever changed by it. (Susan Wloszczyna)

Upon seeing
diligent-but-overwhelmed concierge Monsieur Jean (Jason Schwartzman) put out a
cigarette with his spit and forefingers, Jude Law's "Young
Writer," the first of “The Grand Budapest Hotel”'s three
narrators, conspiratorially says of the character, "I
expect he was not very well-paid." There's a world of nuance in that ostensibly inclusive yet fussy aside. It's neither the first nor the last time
that one of the film's cabal of story-tellers interrupt themselves in order to
simultaneously compose their wandering thoughts and impress
their audience, like when F. Murray Abraham's Mr. Moustafa prefaces
his own story by saying "It begins,
as it must, with our mutual friend's predecessor."

These
characteristic digressions are not, in that sense, singular tics, but rather
telling hallmarks of writer/director Wes Anderson's baroque style. It's the
little things that makes Anderson's latest such a great—maybe even his greatest—film. “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” a neo-screwball comedy set in an imaginary country, is the kind of movie that
appreciates every time you re-watch it thanks to little details like the coat
check chit that Deputy Kovacs (Jeff Goldblum) receives after his cat is thrown
out a window, and then collected for him in a small sack: "One cat
(deceased)." It's the work of a virtuosic story-teller, one who
makes narrative tangents the heart of his work. The film is a masterwork of
comic timing and expression, thanks in no small part to Ralph
Fiennes's joyfully manic performance as Monsieur Gustave. Fiennes turns on
a dime with such hilarious poise, even when he's talking about beating up
"a snively little runt called Pinky Bandynsky…because if there's one thing we've learned
from penny dreadfuls, it's that when you find yourself in a place like this, you
must never be a candy-ass." And yet it's not any little detail that makes “The Grand Budapest Hotel”so
good, but rather every little detail, from the
constipated, frog-in-throat stare Mathieu Amalric's Serge X. gives Fiennes
before Gustave screams to Serge that he should just get to
the point to the paltry half-ounce bottle of L'Air de Panache that Gustave
takes from an apologetic Monsieur Ivan (Bill Murray). Through his characters,
you can see Anderson itching to get ahead of himself, and move his monumental
plot from points A to B to R to X. But Anderson somehow never does get ahead
of himself. Every puzzle piece fits exactly. (Simon Abrams)

3. “Boyhood” (Richard Linklater)

Life is
little more than a series of moments. When you’re young, most of those moments
are heavy with importance. What could possibly be more important than the
“right now” to a teenager confused about his direction in life or who recently
had his heart broken? As you get older, you realize how many of the key events
from your childhood merely blur into the fabric of your memory. We often remember
the days that didn’t seem quite as intense and forget the days that left us
crying. When Patricia Arquette says to her son (Ellar Coltrane) in “Boyhood,” “I just thought there would be more than this,”
the generational disconnect in the way we view the world is clear. Mom, THIS is
all we need. Few filmmakers, if any, have ever captured this fluidity of
perspective as to the moments that make up our lives as Richard Linklater did
in “Boyhood.” The argument that it’s not a definitive point-of-view, because
we’re not all white kids living in Austin in the ‘00s, misses the universality
of Linklater’s purpose. Mason’s childhood is not mine and probably not yours,
and yet there’s something so pure about Linklater’s approach to it that the
story resonates across gender, race, and generation. Employing a daringly
ambitious structure placed on the backs of his equally-committed collaborators,
Linklater did something all-too-rare in modern film: He conveyed an oft-told
story in a new way. He illuminated his themes through his devotion to his
ambitious concept, working as he has so often in years past in a completely
collaborative way with great artists including Patricia Arquette and Ethan
Hawke. Working together, they have given us a film that feels deceptively simple—its
critics argue its lack of narrative or traditional “plot”—and yet summons an emotional impact in its final scenes that shatters that impression.
The seemingly inconsequential beats of a life blend with more intense key
moments into a film that has become one of the most beloved pieces of art of
the year by transcending its structure and its simplicity. (Brian Tallerico)

Writing on
Twitter, the screenwriter and critic Larry Gross (who’s a friend of mine)
observed that “the problems with Paul Thomas Anderson’s work are ‘inherent’ in
American cinema’s current conditions of possibility.” A knotty thought, but a
very pertinent one, because Anderson’s adaptation of a 2009 Thomas Pynchon
novel is an all-American film that in many ways goes wildly against the grain
of what’s permissible in contemporary American cinema. And in so doing manages
not only to be a fantastically astute cinematic realization of the wooly,
not-unfriendly paranoid vibe of Pynchon’s tale of a stoner detective in a
fictional web in a fictional California beach town, but also very fully a Paul
Thomas Anderson film.

The outrageous gag-based humor is new to Anderson, but
the absurdity that animates it is something that does go all the way back to
“Boogie Nights.” And as with his 2012 “The Master,” the notes of loss and
loneliness and pain Anderson hits as he deconstructs Pynchon’s wise-ass hero
“Doc” Sportello—a fallen angel Quixote who’s not entirely surprised to discover
that he’s less than the sum of his parts—are not just jolting, they’re
practically shocking, as in a sex scene in the film’s last third that throws
the loose jokiness that came before into unnerving relief, and throws the
notion of redemption out the window if not under a bus. Anderson’s first-rate,
seemingly inexhaustible cast, ranging from Joaquin Phoenix to Michael K.
Williams to Reese Witherspoon to Owen Wilson to Martin Short to Josh Brolin to
Michelle Sinclair (once known as Belladonna) and more, anchored by both
new-to-movies Joanna Newsom and new-to-leading-roles Katherine Waterston, is
fully attuned to his vision, which is neither as freewheeling nor as
plot-negligent as it appears to be on first viewing. This itself speaks to the
problems to which Gross alludes; for as much entertainment as any shot or
sequence of “Inherent Vice” delivers, there’s a sense that this is not the most
immediately user-friendly of films; its depiction of the way things we thought
had cohered tend to fall back apart is a distinctly and deliberately uneasy
one. (Glenn Kenny)

The year’s best film is also one of its
most challenging. If you like your movies comforting, safe and tidy—if you
treasure things like catharsis and closure and enjoy having your questions
answered—then you should probably look elsewhere. “Under the Skin” is not for
you. But if you want to be thrilled and wowed both emotionally and
intellectually—if you’re prepared to surrender yourself to inspired visuals and
a mesmerizing tone, and to be moved deeply by them—then drop whatever you’re
doing and go find “Under the Skin” now. With only his third film (following
2000’s “Sexy Beast” and 2004’s “Birth”), director and co-writer Jonathan Glazer
has crafted a minimalist sci-fi masterpiece. Comparisons to Stanley Kubrick are
not unwarranted, both for his precise tone and for his striking imagery. But
Glazer also draws from Scarlett Johansson a performance of great power; it’s
the best work yet of her eclectic career.

As an alien being prowling about
Glasgow, Scotland, preying on unsuspecting single men to fulfill her nefarious
purposes, Johansson is both charismatic and chilling. She can be a ferociously
sexy creature to behold—and a little curvier than usual, an appealing surprise—but
how she looks isn’t as important as what she does with those looks. Between
“Under the Skin,” “Lucy” and “Her,” Johansson has been having a field day
lately subverting her celebrated sensuality. The fact that Glazer shot so much
of the film using hidden cameras inside a van—often with real people rather
than actors who didn’t realize who Johansson was—adds to the film’s allure.
It’s a stripped-down, documentary-style approach within a film full of
gleaming, high-tech touches. Chief among them are composer Mica Levi’s score—a
dissonant jumble that puts you on edge from the start—and the eerie, exquisite
sound design. What draws these poor souls in—and what permeates the entire film—is
an unshakable sense of loneliness and longing. All these men want to do is
forge a human connection, and they vividly pay the price. Johansson’s character
starts out on a mission but eventually finds a way to connect, as well. But her
fate, though intentionally vague, is nonetheless haunting. (Christy Lemire)

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